Atelier de l’artiste

Sa vente après-décès, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Me Pillet, 10-11 mai 1875, lot 39 (6.300 frs), son cachet de cire rouge sur le châssis au verso

Collection James Duncan (1834-1905), Londres

Collection Victor Desfossés (1835-1899), Paris

Sa vente, Paris, Mes Chevallier et Duchesne, 26 avril 1899, lot 43 (39.000 frs)

Acquis lors de cette vente par Ernest Cognacq (1839-1928), Paris

Collection Gabriel Cognacq (1880-1951), son neveu, Paris

Sa vente, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Mes Bellier, Ader et Thullier, 14 novembre 1952, lot 31 (940.000 frs)

Collection particulière 

Puis par descendance

Vente Paris, Artcurial, 19 novembre 2020, lot 138

Acquis lors de cette vente par l'actuel propriétaire

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, J.-F. Millet, 1887, n°42, p. 51 (hauteur erronée)

Paris, Chambre syndicale de la Curiosité, L'Art français au service de la science française, avril - mai 1923, n° 202

Paris, La Samaritaine de luxe, automne 1926

Paris, Palais national des Arts, Chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art français, Paris, juin - octobre 1937, n° 369 (selon une étiquette au dos)

Venise, Venise, XXIe Exposition biennale des Beaux-Arts, Mostra Internazionale del Paesaggio del Secolo XIX - Francia, 1938, n° 357, p. 88 (selon une étiquette au dos) 

A. Piedagnel, J.-F. Millet, Souvenirs de Barbizon, Paris, 1888, mentionné p. 71

Le Figaro illustré, n° 109, avril 1899, reproduit

C. Gronkowski, "Quelques souvenirs sur M. Cognacq", in La Revue hebdomadaire, Paris, mars 1928, p. 120

Connaissance des arts, n° 10, 15 décembre 1952, reproduit p. 35

P. Cabanne, "Les Cognacq", in Jardin des arts, n° 179, octobre 1969, reproduit p. 80 (photographie de la chambre de Gabriel Cognacq)

B. Couilleaux, "La collection Cognacq, entre legs et dispersion", in Choisir Paris : les grandes donations aux musées de la Ville de Paris, Paris, INHA, 2015, mentionné p. 50

D. Rykner, "De Ribera à Millet, le marché de l’art (re)confiné", in La Tribune de l’art, 17 novembre 2020, fig. 7

Towards the end of his life, in August 1870, Jean-François Millet left Barbizon, which was close to Paris, and returned to his native Normandy. He moved with his family to the village of Gruchy, Gréville-Hague, in the region of La Manche where he had grown up, in order to flee the Franco-Prussian war, remaining there until November 1871.

In the autumn of 1870, Napoleon III’s France had surrendered to the Prussian army, who had laid siege to Paris. With the Second Empire and its splendour now a thing of the past, many left the banks of the Seine in search of more clement skies. In his correspondence, notably with his friend Alfred Sensier (1815–1877), who wrote the artist’s biography and catalogue, he told of the hardships of exile and the anguish of war. If he struggled to “even put a single stroke of pencil down outdoors” (1), he nevertheless managed to produce coastal landscapes and seascapes, a genre that was becoming increasingly significant in his work. Paradoxically, this stay proved to be fruitful, as it strengthened his ties with the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who had taken refuge in London, and who provided him with financial support and who, in 1871, presented Les Falaises de Gruchy (1870, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, no. 17.1529) at the inaugural exhibition of the Society of French Artists. 

The dealer received several marines painted by Millet during his forced exile, where the water formed by the juxtaposition of perfectly legible brushstrokes, going from deep blue to turquoise or pale green to lavender, demonstrates a true modernity to which Claude Monet would not have been indifferent.

Moss-covered rocks, blades of grass flattened by the wind, cloudy skies filled with seagulls, waves capped with white, the sun’s reflections causing the water to sparkle, and fragile boats rocked or tossed about by the waves, Millet’s brush navigates along the coast from Cherbourg to Gruchy, succeeding in capturing on canvas the unique atmosphere of this coastline, putting all his sensibility as a plein-air painter at the service of light. 

Our painting depicts a small fragile boat gently rocked by a calm sea, whose small waves shimmer with an almost silvery sheen in the light of day's end. The small, slightly billowing sail evokes a sense of tranquillity, as does one of the sailors sitting quietly at the stern, no doubt holding the helm. The ever-changing skies of Normandy provided Millet with the ideal setting to convey the anxieties and uncertainties of his time. Dark, heavy clouds fill the sky, pierced at their centre by rays of sunlight that bathe the surface of the waves, creating an almost otherworldly impression of calm and tranquillity after the storm - a glimmer of hope amidst a turbulent political climate. 

This work, preceded by a preparatory sketch, is one of the few paintings by the artist in which the sea takes centre stage. As in his other seascape, Barque en Mer (1871, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, no. 17.1530), Millet employs a nuanced palette of greens, blues and blue-greens, punctuated by highlights of white. He achieves his pursuit “of the essential’ (2) through drawing and the treatment of light and shadow. In his later landscapes and seascapes, painted in the places of his childhood, he found this simple truth: that of immensity, solitude and contemplation.

It is not always possible to trace the destiny of a work of art from its creation to today, but the path followed by the two fishermen in their boat is particularly well documented. Having been in the most illustrious of settings, Barque de Pêche by Jean-François Millet hung alongside timeless masterpieces. Its successive owners – James Duncan, Victor Desfossés, then Ernest and Gabriel Cognacq – shared eclectic taste, mixing painting with the decorative arts, with a particular affection for late 19^th century French artists, the pioneers of modernity. Presented after the artist’s death in the Millet sale at Hôtel Drouot in May 1875, the painting entered the London collection of James Duncan, which also included Delacroix’s La Mort de Sardanapole (Paris, Musée du Louvre). The painting then went to banker and collector Victor Desfossés, who exhibited it in his hôtel particulier on rue de Galilée in Paris. On 26 April 1899, Barque de pêche alongside L’Atelier du Peintre by Courbet (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), La Seine à Asnières by Claude Monet (Saint-Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum), La Toilette by Jean-Baptiste Corot, L’Hercule de Foire by Honoré Daumier (Washington D.C., The Philipps Collection) and many other works by major figures of the 19^th century, from Delacroix to Pissarro, were sold at Victor Desfossé's posthumous sale.

It was in this sale that Ernest Cognacq, founder of La Samaritaine, purchased the work on the advice of the young Camille Gronkowski, future curator at the Petit Palais (3).

Cognacq’s flourishing business enabled him to begin an ambitious collection with his wife, Marie-Louise Jay ‒ that they would expand and ultimately bequeath in part to the city of Paris upon Ernest Cognacq’s death in 1928. Boucher, Tiepolo, Chardin, Greuze… the 18th-century masterpieces that visitors can now admire in their Parisian hôtel particulier on Rue Elzévir, which houses the Musée Cognacq-Jay, might lead us to forget that this significant collection initially began with acquisitions of works by modern artists, only turning its focus to the Enlightenment from around 1900 onwards. Ernest and Marie-Louise Cognacq were also keen to share their collection and organised four exhibitions in the Samaritaine de Luxe between 1925 and 1927. Millet’s Barque de Pêche was presented there in the autumn of 1926, as can be seen in an old photograph.

Following the death of Ernest Cognacq, the position of director of the Samaritaine and the collection of modern art were bestowed upon Cognacq’s nephew, Gabriel Cognacq, who continued to enrich it with important pieces by Manet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Degas…but also with Old Master prints and rare books. A photograph of his bedroom on rue Bugeaud reveals the treasures that filled his private living quarters, in it the small sail of Millet’s Barque de Pêche stands out yet again.

1. Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Millet raconté par lui-même, Paris, H. Laurens, 1921, t. III, p. 58.

2.Selon Paul Mantz, « Jean-François Millet », in Le Temps, 2 March 1875.

3.Camille Gronkowski, « Quelques souvenirs sur M. Cognacq », in La Revue hebdomadaire, Paris, March 1928, p. 120